He assumed he'd come out there, do his 4-3 combo and some 3 axs, basically dance around the ice making "I'm great" gestures and be handed the gold. And, shock of all shocks, the judges did what the Code of Points told them to: reward minimal crosscuts, true musical interpretation, choreography that led to a balanced program that went to the music, etc.

And whose program apart from Dai, Kozuka, Lambiel, Weir and Amodio had that?Brezina maybe.
I want to say also that this all would be ideal but judging did not work that way cause you can have a quad and an innovating program and end up out of 10, like Adrian!
Re Plush: Oy mama, well call him bad taste, call his choreographer incapable or whatever, but I cant read that Plush has not worked hard to be in Olys again in that form, and thought he would go out and move his hips and win. If he had treated his comeback that way Voronov would be in Olys instead of him. His program had the layout more or less of 2006 with quad and both the axels front loaded, with a backplan to move them at the end in case of a mistake a la Russian NAtionals. Maybe Mishin tried his best thinking of his condition and what he can do with the mash potato knees. Personally I blame the one banana he ate all day.:boohoo:
In any case the only bad thing that happened to him is that he didnt become Mr Dick Button as he wished. Ah well I survived, he will also

I think there is another way to look at it. I think that Plushenko did what he could. A skater front-loads his jumps for a reason -- it is easier to land them on fresh legs.

I don't think Plushenko said, "I know, I'll put my quad first so I will get fewer points for it." "I will only do one quad instead of two because I cannot figure out how many extra points a quad is worth in the CoP." "I will deliberately do only average spins because I don't want those extra GOE points (GOEs are for sissies.)."

Plushenko did improve his spins by all accounts, and there, I think he did all he could. But Plushenko has landed quad after quad in practice. So I disagree with your assumption that Plushenko couldn't have done more difficult jumps or couldn't do them later.

Originally Posted by prettykeys

I disagree. You and others are arguing about where Plushenko left out marks; Evan with his nearly perfectly-clean programs still almost lost to Plushenko. If Plushenko had skated with his average ability, then he would have skated more cleanly than he did at the Oly's and won. If anything, Evan had the weaker strategy and was relying on someone's weakness to come through (and it did)--and even then, it was close. By your reasoning, Evan had a bad strategy because he should have put in a quad somewhere in his LP (preferably in the latter part) because by not doing one, he was leaving out points. Etc, etc.

Sorry, but judging and reffing controversies happen all the time; I'm not saying that Lysacek isn't the rightful winner, but at the same time, I don't think it is clear-cut that Plushenko lost, nor is it clear that Plushenko should have lost. Furthermore, people aren't necessarily disputing the rules of the game when they argue that a ref made a bad call (or missed a call they should have made).

The results speak for themselves, of course. And we all know the saying hope for the best, plan for the worst. Well, Plushenko most assuredly did not plan for himself to have some wonky jumps and mistakes, while Lysacek did. In fact, if you look at the protocols, you'll see that Lysacek has way more deductions on his jumps. Lysacek planned for things to go a little wrong and still leave himself with enough points to win, Plushenko didn't. Bad strategy in the latter case.

The ref calls I strenuously disagree with, in this case, are the ones that made the result close at all. The judges massively failed to apply the PCS criteria as the ISU issued them. No, I'm not talking about transitions, but rather Performance, Choreography and Interpretation. He was the antithesis of multiple criteria for those scores. Yet his scores for those were among the highest. Ridiculous. Had the judges been playing within the rules, it wouldn't have been close at all.